At a moment of imminent peril, Qiao Ruohe instinctively pulled out a Fire Talisman and hurled it toward the golden palm descending from the sky.
With a loud boom—fire overcoming metal—the golden palm spell encountered the flames, instantly turning into a ball of golden light that scattered in all directions.
"Eldest Senior Brother, watch out behind you!" Xiao Ling shouted toward Qiao Ruohe.
It turned out that the burly fellow had sneaked up behind him unawares. With golden light erupting from both palms and extending threefold in length, he struck at Qiao Ruohe from both sides.
Qiao Ruohe gripped two Fire Talismans and lashed out to his left and right.
Two deafening explosions rang out, the shockwaves throwing the burly man off balance and forcing him back two or three steps.
Regaining his footing, the burly man finally reacted to Xiao Ling's warning. "How is this scrawny monkey—who was long ago eliminated by the sect—your Eldest Senior Brother again?" he demanded of Xiao Ling.
Having thrown three consecutive fire talismans, Qiao Ruohe was engaging in combat with someone for the very first time. To his surprise, he had gained the upper hand, and a wave of involuntary excitement stirred within him.
Seeing that Xiao Ling not only failed to answer the man's question, but instead walked over to the fellow and asked if he was injured—their demeanor resembling that of old friends—immediately infuriated him.
"If not for fire overcoming metal, you wouldn't be a match for me!"
Cracking his knuckles, the burly man closed in by three or five paces. He fished a pair of golden light gloves from the gourd at his waist and slipped them over his hands. "I'll let you taste my true power!"
Qiao Ruohe shoved Xiao Ling behind him, signaling her to stand farther back.
A "boom" of an exploding firebal rang out.
Blasted by a surge of fiery spiritual power, the burly man could not hold his ground against the fists and palms, flying back seven or eight feet before crashing to the ground.
Right behind the fireball, Qiao Ruohe sprang up abruptly, holding a Fire Talisman in each hand. "Don't push people too far!" He flicked both fire talismans from his hands, hurling them at the burly man.
With his left golden fist and right golden palm, the burly man barely managed to block the two fireballs. He knew that while his cultivation was superior to this kid's, his bone roots were pure metal, and his techniques belonged to the metal element—making him utterly countered by fire-attribute spells and talismans.
Since close combat was a losing battle, he would fight from a distance.
He instantly soared into the air, leaping onto a thick branch of a withered tree, and unleashed countless martial immortal techniques of fists and palms carrying golden light toward Qiao Ruohe.
Qiao Ruohe wanted to dodge again, but he lacked full mastery over his spiritual power. In the nick of time, he could only pull out fire talismans from his waist one by one, clashing them against the burly man's golden light palms.
For a time, in the Withered Wood Forest of the Divine Wood Palace, the flames scorched the hundred withered trees until the fire soared into the sky.
The burly man summoned a Dharma Treasure, a golden bell tripod, and spun it toward Qiao Ruohe.
"Clang!" Trapping Qiao Ruohe inside, the fireballs in his palms vanished instantly.
A ceaseless ringing echoed in his ears, bringing dizziness and a spinning sensation as if the entire world were shaking.
As Qiao Ruohe staggered unsteadily inside the golden bell tripod, his fire-craft manual slipped from his robes. The violent vibrations within the tripod whipped up a flurry of wild winds that caused the manual to flip its pages frantically before it was plastered against the inner wall of the tripod.
Clutching his head and groaning in struggle, he suddenly snapped his eyes open.
The two opened pages of the fire-craft manual were right before his eyes. On the left page was an illustration of a bookish man with fire in his eyes, holding two blazing flames in his palms. The man in the book appeared as lifelike as a living entity, staring straight at Qiao Ruohe.
Next to the illustration in the book were three large seal-script characters written in crimson: "Fire Overcomes Metal."
For some reason, a dark shadow suddenly emerged from within his body, sucking those three characters straight into its mouth and nose.
In a split second, his entire body felt as though it were being consumed by fire. Blazing infernos surged ceaselessly from his Origin Core, erupting like a sea of fire from Qiao Ruohe's seven orifices.
In an instant, Qiao Ruohe melted the Dharma Treasure into four lumps of golden sludge.
Sensing imminent danger, the burly man vaulted into the air and leaped onto a tree branch.
Qiao Ruohe stood his ground. Although he could not fly through the air, the flames in his palms burned ceaselessly. He swung his palms continuously, striking toward the burly man hiding among the withered tree branches.
The fireballs from his palms slammed toward the burly man like ancient catapult stones, hurtling forward one after another in rapid succession.
Powerless to resist, the burly man could only leap about among the tree branches like a sturdy ape.
"Fellow Daoist possesses boundless magical power, please stay your hand!" After dodging for dozens of rounds, the burly man finally spoke up to beg for mercy.
Yet for some reason, Qiao Ruohe felt the dark shadow entangling his chest and fire blazing in his eyes. It was his first time channeling spiritual energy to execute spells, and having tasted blood in the heat of battle, how could he possibly stop?
In the pitch-black night sky, a single figure stood in place, unleashing fireballs of varying trajectories and sizes. Meanwhile, another figure darted up, down, left, and right, dodging from east to west and north to south, zipping back and forth with a continuous "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh" to evade the fireballs.
The endless fireballs in his palms set dozens of towering ancient trees ablaze, sending flames soaring into the sky over the Withered Wood Forest.
You can dodge fifty, but you cannot dodge a hundred; a fireball grazed right past the burly man. Scorched all over by the flames, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "Fellow Daoist, spare my life! Let's talk this over!"
Realizing that the Young Master of Jinling Garden was about to perish at the hands of the Eldest Senior Brother—which would not only incinerate the green-bound secret manual that had been snatched from him, but also cause the Eldest Senior Brother to make a mortal enemy of that prominent clan—Xiao Ling rushed forward and pleaded, "Eldest Senior Brother, show mercy!"
Instead, she was barked at by several cyan-robed cultivators who had arrived on flying swords: "Audacious scoundrel, how dare you commit arson and burn the mountains in Divine Wood Palace!"
The attention of the three youths had been focused entirely on one another. In the blink of an eye, they now saw that a hundred trees in this Withered Wood Forest were ablaze. Under the night sky, the mountain forest burned, and the lingering smoke drifted toward the Two Valleys and Two Forests.
Those patrolling sect cultivators possessed profound cultivation. Abruptly unleashing wood-attribute spells, vines like drilling serpents coiled around all three of them.
Before the three could offer a word of explanation, they were seized and dragged to the Discipline Platform of the Divine Wood Palace, tied to punitive wooden stakes to be made an example of.
Having previously fought the Combat of Immortals with unrestrained vigor, they were now reduced to ordinary punished disciples sharing the exact same plight. Qiao Ruohe and Jin Dapeng exchanged glances, a lingering sense of mutual hero appreciation passing between them.
Only Xiao Ling, the Junior Sister, remained panic-stricken and uneasy. Having stirred up such trouble, how could she ever maintain a foothold in the sect if she were expelled from Divine Wood Palace?
Aside from the green-bound secret manual given to her by Qiao Ruohe, she still needed to steal a copy of the Myriad Flowers True Formula from her master, or find a certain object within the forbidden grounds. Only when both conditions were met could she return to her family in the Western Country.
This secret could not be divulged to outsiders. Turning her head to look at Qiao Ruohe, she thought to herself: *Even if my true identity is exposed, I must not drag the Eldest Senior Brother down with me.*
"Xiao Ling, why do you only pity him? I've been dragged into this misery too because of you." Jin Dapeng kept eighty percent of his gaze fixed on the young girl, noting that she had not once looked him straight in the eye.
Just as Xiao Ling was about to speak, a dozen cyan-robed cultivators flew in and landed before them.
"Senior Brother of Direct Descent, how should we deal with them?" The patrolling cultivator who had previously captured the three turned and asked a long-faced man holding a folding fan who stood at the front of the group.
The long-faced man wore a deep cyan Daoist robe. His status differed somewhat from the ordinary disciples; one could tell at a glance that he belonged to the upper crust. Pacing back and forth in front of the three, his gaze finally lingered on Xiao Ling.
"You're the one with the water-and-wood dual bone roots that Elder Fanhua took in?"
Noticing that although this man was dressed lavishly, his gaze and expression toward Xiao Ling carried a hint of ill intent, Jin Dapeng bellowed, "If you want to punish someone, punish me, and tack on her share as well!"
Hearing this, the long-faced man's expression darkened with displeasure. "Very well, bind their hands and feet, seal their spiritual power, and toss them off the Discipline Platform."
That Discipline Platform was suspended over a peak of Shenmu Mountain, and the punitive wooden stakes binding the three were surrounded by boundless abyssal cliffs.
If their spiritual power were sealed and they could not fly through the air, wouldn't they be smashed to pieces?